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CB: Yea, I know rootless is saying this. I’ve heard it , ooohhh, 750 times or so from Trotskyists and various other lefties. I’M DISAGREEING WITH IT.

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The CPUSA has been out of step with the left for a long time (beginning with its endorsement of putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WWII, and continuing today with its tepid opposition to that Democrat-embarrassing situation in Iraq and Afghanistan… where Obama has promised to remain and fight… well, let other people fight).
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CB: The CP has run more people for President and other offices than the “left” from what I count. The “left” you refer to is mostly talk, although , I do work with the fearcely anti-Democratic Party left in practice, and of course , they have a big place in the inter-net left.

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On another point, Charles, you are carpet-bombing again… and the numerous posts we are not putting up are those that are serial endorsements for the Obama campaign. I suggest Daily KOS. They believe in suspending all criticism of Democrats over there, too

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CB: You must be mistaken. You have posted all my posts lately. None have been dropped. I got no complaints. You are doing a good job (smile)

On “carpetbombing”, I got another name for your raving/raging posts ( you know when you’ve been up all night or whatever) : “napalming”.

Thank you for many things, one of them your activation of exceptionally lively on-line discourse.

I hope you’ll post a response to Gayle (and, perhaps, to Robert Jensen’s ancillary post, at DissidentVoice.org, on what transpires from questions cc. masculinity/femininity that he asks of his students?).

– from a long-ago student at Woman’s College

Nobody here (that I saw) was “defending” Clinton or Coulter. They are, or at least I was, defending women as an oppressed class against a culture that says it’s okay to demean women for not doing the feminine/feminist dance the right way.

I was speaking out against the notion that all women in the public eye should be reduced to some sort of fuckability rating – because it sets the tone that all women, even those not in the public eye, even poor women, even women who are refugees, should be reduced in this way. This way of assessing women overshadows war, policies, economics, anything of substance in the news. Earlier in that same day of my initial response, I’d been holding this site up elsewhere as an example of a blog where people can discuss issues without reducing women to the size of their chest, the style of their clothes, the way they wear their hair. Whether or not they have an Adam’s apple. Was I wrong on that?

I remember when Cynthia McKinney wore her hair natural and the media declared it a national crisis and went to nearly 24 hour emergency coverage of The Event.

I can’t figure out a way in which constantly expressing disapproval of women based on their looks is going to do anything other than add to the objectification and dehumanization of all women. I can’t figure out a way in which objectifying women and dehumanizing them does anything other than contribute to a rape culture – even if you add a footnote saying it’s okay cause you think Kerry is ugly, too, as if it’s okay to demean women so long as you make an effort to demean some men as well. (Rouenna and I disagree on that point.)

Out here in Michigan, people are still being killed for not doing their gender roles right. When I see someone beaten to death for looking too femme or too butch, then I log in here and see people gloating because a woman they don’t like has an Adam’s apple, I see that you are part of the problem. The people who are in a position to be victimized by the values and culture you are promoting are, well, the people in a position to be victimized.

I am not sure if you see promoting visceral hatred of enemy women’s bodies as being an entirely separate thing from ritual raping of women during war. I don’t think it is.

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There has been a threat of fascism. You and rootless should reconsider what you learned. It’s truer than what your position now.

STAN: No, what rootless pointed out was that this threat (impending and repending now for many decades) is the rationale for “left-center unity,” with the “left” being the 300 strong (or whatever) Communist Party USA… one reason he accurately called it a myth. The CPUSA has been out of step with the left for a long time (beginning with its endorsement of putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WWII, and continuing today with its tepid opposition to that Democrat-embarrassing situation in Iraq and Afghanistan… where Obama has promised to remain and fight… well, let other people fight). On another point, Charles, you are carpet-bombing again… and the numerous posts we are not putting up are those that are serial endorsements for the Obama campaign. I suggest Daily KOS. They believe in suspending all criticism of Democrats over there, too.

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Only if you admit that as a Black person , Obama was held to entirely different standard than Clinton. This whole lie that Obama was given an easy ride by the media was put out by Clinton ( and Saturday Night Live) as a sneak attack on Obama. Ferraro had the nerve to out and out state the Ku Klux Klan line that Obama had an advantage because he was Black ! You ain’t foolin’ us, believe me.

oppressed, humiliated and exploited people are not nice, not smiling, not polite. they’ll smash th window of a store and set an embassy on fire. but you have better things to do than identifying with them.you and your empathy — you only give it to the rich so that you can dream of being one of them. i have lived in the us long enough to know your hearts.

I will only protect people who are weak. It doesn’t matter how much I hate Hilly and Billy and whatever their names are: my hatred cannot touch them. But knowing who my enemy is helps me: I am certainly not identifying with them or coveting their wealth or “elegance.”

Perhaps I was too busy scrubbing toilets to pay precise attention to Hillary’s crimes. Being a war refugee, I know enough about her. People among my friends and relatives are dying of cancer because of DU shells. That’s not pretty either, but in my mind, they are much prettier than Hillary.

I would love to be lazy, but I’m afraid I won’t have any bread on my table if I do so. Lazy to me is the knee-jerk response of defending Hillary. There is nothing I have in common with her — am I supposed to like her only because we both have a vagina? Hers was protected by the UN guys, mine was raped. Is that lazy, too?

Further, I have to say that the outright support for Saint Obama based on his “stunning record” seems to be terrifically naive. He is not some radical liberal who is going to deliver us from all evil, and every evil, amen (sign of the cross)! He is just as driven by power as Hillary Clinton or any other nasty politician we have seen. He is amazingly manipulative and almost Machiavellian in his recent maneuver to opt out of the public finance system. Despite great proposed tax increases, this liberal lover of the common person would not even agitate for socialized healthcare (horrors-did I say socialized?). Like the other candidates, he has taken donations from defense contractors. He voted against the Iraq Waste–I mean War–but he also voted, as Gayle noted, to fund it twice. He voted ‘present’ 130 times in his stint as Senator from Illinois. And, well, we can certainly expect real change (oh yes we can!) from a man whose advisers are Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Madeleine Albright, Robert Rubin… Wait, aren’t these people from, uh…the CLINTON administration??? Wow! Change to policy from…the 90s??? These facts, in case anyone is interested, are cleverly concealed on public web sites.

Am I saying that I prefer war-mongering Repubs (represented by phony “kindly grandfather who loves us all” John McCain of the Keating 5…)? NO! But we need to be careful before we hurl our support behind a candidate. Indeed, we need to demand facts documenting specific actions taken that support our views before we fall madly in love with candidates. Until then, our political process will be morphed into personality worship, and the will of the common people will be squandered on egos who do little more than talk. We need a skeptical, pragmatic, and logical view of politics that does not substitute hero worship for debate.

And yet you say you’ll vote for Obama? Why, because he once made a speech to an anti-Iraq war crowd in an anti-Iraq war blue district? The same man who, after becoming a US. Senator, voted to fully fund the war–twice! Stunning!!

Really Stan, if you’re going to post on masculinity in this race at least acknowledge the fact that Hillary Clinton was held to an entirely different standard than her opponent. “Why, gosh darn it, if that little lady ain’t perfect, we aren’t voting for her!!” Well, aren’t you holier than thou.

And that revolting Tim Wise article. Are you kidding me? He tells white women to stand with “our black and brown sisters.” Well, guess what– My brown sisters voted for Clinton– by huge margins! To say nothing of my Asian sisters who also voted for Clinton. Why is it the vast majority of female Democratic voters have been ignored and demeaned when not threatened outright? Oh yes, it’s because we’re female.

“I will vote for Barack Obama in November, for a lot of reasons.”

You know I’ve read your initial post three times and I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If you were voting third party, as I am, I’d get it. But you’re voting for Obama? “for a lot of reasons.”

(???)

Stunned. I’m stunned.